MINI Designer: MINI Models Don’t Need to be Small Anymore

Cardvice caught up with Florian Nissl
(project lead on exteriors at MINI Design) and spoke a bit about MINI’s growing size. The key topic was size and how MINI as a brand doesn’t necessarily need to only produce small cars.

“I think that once you get familiar with the idea that Mini is a brand that doesn’t necessarily offer cars that are ‘mini’ because the name says ‘Mini’, then I think you start to realise, at least that’s it for me, that you can do a lot with the brand really because it’s very strong from a design point of view. It’s very flexible and so on and that’s very exciting really.”

“There is a lot of positive chances in there to create new products and cater for a new experiences. So for example, when we designed the Vision Next 100, we really tried to take a lot of that into account and into consideration and try to really strip down the design, [but] we stayed very true to the [original] design,” he continued.

“From my point of view it worked. The car gives you still the impression it’s a Mini, but it’s a completely different design then what we have now in the suite. So it shows you what you can do with the design language and the brand in retrospect.”

“We even changed the proportion of the car, and again it still works as a Mini. So therefore it shows how much flexibility there is, in terms of its design,” Nissl added.

Does MINI need to be only be mini anymore? Can the brand extend into larger vehicles without confusing consumers and muddying what the brand stands for? Let us know below.